We will be joined by prominent figures from the industry, who will explore the major developments that have taken place over the past decade. Illustrated by a series of clips, they will be examining the dramatic changes we have seen in documentary filmmaking.

John Battsek is one of the most successful producers in the UK, running the film department at Passion Pictures, known for multi-award-winning films such as One Day in September (1999), Restrepo (2010) and Searching for Sugar Man (2013). He was recently awarded the prestigious Grierson Trustees’ Award on 4 November 2013.

Charlotte Moore, was appointed as controller of BBC One in June of this year. Before that she was the BBC’s commissioning editor for documentaries, commissioning from both in-house and independent production companies across BBC One, Two, Three and Four.

Christopher Hird is the founder of Dartmouth Films, whose credits include John Pilger’s The War You Don’t See (2010) and Rupert Murray’s The End of the Line (2009). He is a former chair of the Sheffield International Documentary Festival, was the founding chair of the Channel 4 Britdoc Foundation and is a trustee of the Wincott Foundation, The Grierson Trust and the Centre for Investigative Journalism.

Charlotte Cook will be moderating the discussion. She is currently director of programming at Hot Docs. Before moving to Toronto in 2011 she was strand coordinator at BBC Storyville and documentary programmer at the Frontline Club.

By Rosie Scammell

An intimate evening unfolded at the Frontline Club last night, as Argentine photojournalist Adriana Groisman talked through her photography commemorating the Falklands/Malvinas War.

In a venue famed for its images of conflicts, Groisman’s work presented an unexpected calm – rolling waves in black & white; stark island landscapes in grey hues tinged with colour. But rather than see beauty in the images, it is the scars within the landscapes she urged the audience to understand.

‘Voices of the South Atlantic’ began when Groisman accompanied National Geographic on its search for the Belgrano, the Argentine warship sunk by the British to the loss of 323 lives. Soon after, however, the project gained its own momentum:

“I showed it in Buenos Aires, and was able to see how it was received. That was what     inspired me to keep working on the project; the fact that people were seeing somethingtotally different, because the work did not force them to stand on one side or another of theconflict.”

With politicians ruled by their own agendas on both sides, Groisman sought out another avenue, and united Argentines, Brits and islanders affected by the conflict to reconcile with one another.

Bringing together the man who took a fateful torpedo shot at the Belgrano and one who received the blow, for example, seems an ill-fated venture. Yet granting the men innovative opportunities, such as writing down one wish from the other side, resulted in an openness Groisman said many had thought themselves incapable of.

“It’s strange that we would try to kill each other, when we have so much in common,” said one participant in a short film of the project.

This desire to close the divide plays out throughout Groisman’s work; in one piece she has united all those who died in sea-related hostilities, and notes that with many names it is impossible to tell which side they fought on.

While the tide may be turning in Argentina, with veterans at last receiving better treatment, Groisman said raw emotions still rule: “The few people that are proposing a new way of looking at this are being dismissed as traitors.” Just last month, for example, a television advert was aired depicting Olympic athletes training on ‘Argentine soil’ on the Falkland Islands. The British government responded with furore, while still plotting oil exploration in the region.

But while some are still unwilling to open dialogue, Groisman explained that in getting people together (in a studio lifeboat, no less) to see the faces and hear the voices of the war, reconciliation is achievable:

“The experience between these people made me realise that for former enemies, it ispossible to find common ground and understand each other, and acknowledge eachother’s pain. What this work is proposing is to include rather than exclude, and look at each other as humans.”

Adriana Groisman:Voices of the South Atlantic is showing at Photofusion in Brixton, London, until 25 May.

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Nearly eight years in the making, Voices of the South Atlantic is a major exhibition by Argentinian photographer Adriana Groisman, which marks the 30th Anniversary of the Falklands/Malvinas War.

Join us at the Frontline Club where Groisman will be speaking about her motivations for the project and her experiences whilst making the work.

Brief but bloody, the Falklands/Malvinas War remains a defining moment in the Falkland’s history as well as Britain’s and Argentina’s. To this day, sovereignty of the islands remains a contentious issue and tensions are mounting over the hunt for oil and gas in the Falkland’s waters.

An experienced photographer, Groisman‘s work has appeared in major publications around the globe, including The Smithsonian Magazine, Newsweek, The Atlantic, Aperture, Sette-Corriere della Sera in Italy and French GEO, and has been displayed at numerous galleries and festivals.

Moderated by Director of Autograph ABP Mark Sealy.

Sponsored by:

The exhibition opens on 30 March at the Photofusion Gallery in London and will run until 25 May. It was made possible with support from Autograph ABP, Ffotogallery, Peninsula Arts, Arts Council England and Arts Council of Wales.

By Nicky Armstrong

Solomon Mugera, the BBC’s Africa editor began by describing the balance where Islam and Christianity collide as ‘a delicate pendulum’. For the past seven years award-winning journalist and poet Eliza Griswold has travelled 9,000 miles along this line of collision known as the Tenth Parallel, meeting the people living on this divide between North and South, hot and wet, Muslim and Christian; observing how religion plays into their daily lives and why it is a cause of conflict. Starting West in East Nigeria, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya and then across the Indian Ocean to Indonesia and the Philippines.

Griswold recounted stories of people she had met – speaking of Dr Hawa Adbi a soviet trained gynecologist in Somalia who turned her small family run farm into a refugee camp for 100,000 people.

“She has run this camp for the past 20 years, and just last week, al-Shabaab, the militant group in Somalia came and took part of her land and took thousands of children to rally in the name of al-Qaeda to show that these children supported [them]. Dr Abdi is right now trying to wrestle with holding onto what used to be her own family farm”

Griswold’s study has followed the journey of religion, the routes of Christianity and how Islam has spread further south in Africa. On the reason for conflict Griswold talked of many interrelated factors that must be bought to bear regarding religious conflict.

“I didn’t find one single so called religious conflict that didn’t have a worldly or secular trigger, not one, whether that was a fight over land, oil, water, a political election or even chocolate”

The loss of identity through religion being forced upon people has fractured its routes, radicalising it and twisting it into a form or power often being used politically, turning democracy and politics into a ‘numbers game’.

“National identity was superimposed by a colonial administrator and it never made any sense, so what other forms of identity do make sense? Well it means nothing to be a Nigerian because the nation means very little; nation means even less if you think that government is embezzling between 4 – 8 billion dollars a year, so government is corrupt, not just absent and you have to survive against your government[….] the way in which people ensured their right to mutual survival was through identity”

Griswold ended the event by commenting on the idea of collective identity and how this could affect the future for religion and conflict

“What does it feel like to be more than one person at one time and to wear those identities lightly”

Watch the whole event here:

Travelling together on assignments across four continents, photographer Tom Craig and writer A. A. Gill have worked alongside each other on stories from Albanian capitalism to Madagascan Baobabs over the past eight years.

In a new exhibition opening in March, Flaere Gallery have brought together 20 unseen photographs by Tom Craig with accompanying text by A. A. Gill. The pair will speak at the Frontline Club about their close collaboration and the explorations they have embarked upon together.

As journalists are increasingly expected to multi-task and provide the text, photography, video and tweets for their stories, Gill and Craig will mount a defence of their increasingly rare form of partnership and the insights and enrichment two sides on each story can bring.

The event will be moderated by reader in photography at Westminster University David Campany.

“The one thing words and pictures have in common is that their craft is all in the editing. Out of the streaming confusion of information and images, we have to sift and select the things that make a cogent, coherent, engaging plot… What is happening just outside the picture are the words. And when we get it right, the image and the writing, when they come together, they make something that is greater than their binary parts. They’re not illustrations or captions, but a tandem, complimentary work, without repetition or duplication.” A. A. Gill 

The exhibition will run from 5-10 March at The Gallery in Cork Street in association with Quintessentially and sponsored by Boucheron. The production of the artworks in the exhibit is sponsored by Spectrum Photographic.

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In association with BBC College of Journalism

From the fall of the Berlin Wall to the handover of Hong Kong to China, Matt Frei has spent over two decades reporting across the globe.

Newly-appointed to Channel 4 News as Washington correspondent, Matt Frei, will be in conversation with former BBC executive Vin Ray to look back over nearly two decades at the BBC before his move was announced in May last year.

The author of Only in America,Frei has covered numerous high profile stories and reported from Asia, Europe, America and Africa. He has been awarded, amongst others, the Prix Bayeux award for War Reporting for his coverage of the conflict in East Timor. He presented the BBC World News America broadcast and a weekly Radio 4 show, Americana.

Image Credit: Channel 4 News

A youthful Kate Brooks moved to Pakistan after September 11th 2001 to document the conflicts that flared in the region and make a name for herself as a photojournalist. 

The ten years that followed took her through Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and beyond. Brooks’ images have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Time and Newsweek, and she has received a number of international awards.

Her new book, In the Light of Darkness, records the major conflicts in the Arab world in the past decade, from the mountains of Tora Bora in Afghanistan, to this year’s Arab Spring. The book includes essays she has written to accompany her photography, describing her experiences as a female photojournalist in the Muslim world.

Brooks will be speaking at the Frontline Club at an event moderated by Ramita Navai, reporter for Channel 4’s Unreported World.